1. Field of the Present Invention
The present invention generally relates to the field of multimedia and more particularly to a system for transforming text-based information to audio or audio-video information.
2. History of Related Art
Multimedia presentations are prevalent in a variety of applications including, as just one example, internet applications. The success of many of these applications is largely-based on the realism achieved by the application. Many applications, including email applications, generate text-based information that users might prefer to receive as a multimedia message. (For purposes of this disclosure, a multimedia message refers to an audio message, a video message, or a message containing audio and video). One approach to achieving multimedia messages uses sampled human speech. Drawbacks of this approach include the requirement that the information must be read by a human. In addition, the size (in terms of bytes of information) of a sampled segment of speech, even with sophisticated pause detection and other tricks, is typically relatively large (especially if video information is incorporated into the transmitted information). These large multimedia bit streams frequently must be transmitted over bandwidth starved mediums such as the internet, often resulting in unacceptably low transmission rates that can lead to in poor quality at the receiving end and undesirable delay times. In addition, the capacity of the most commonly used transmission mediums is growing at a much lower rate than the demand. Consequently, there exists a tremendous need for low-bandwidth, low-storage systems capable of producing or emulating high-resolution audio-visual transmission at real-time speeds. The transmission of even compressed samples of multimedia information often consumes excessive bandwidth. Accordingly, it would be highly desirable to implement a solution that enabled a system capable of transmitting a limited amount of data representative of text-based information over a transmission bandwidth and processing the data locally to create a realistic and personalized audio or audio-video stream from the text-based information.